The poem
Alas my brother! the cry of the mourners of old That cried on each other, All crying aloud on the dead as the death-note rolled, Alas my brother!
As flashes of dawn that mists from an east wind smother With fold upon fold, The past years gleam that linked us one with another.
Time sunders hearts as of brethren whose eyes behold No more their mother: But a cry sounds yet from the shrine whose fires wax cold, Alas my brother!